The consumer digital photography industry has the potential for substantial growth. Yet, today several factors are standing in the way, slowing the growth rate. These factors can be understood from the perspectives of both consumer issues and business issues.
Today, many consumers are ignorant of the benefits of digital photography. Many who know of it's existence still see it as something “high tech,” complex, and with limited usefulness—good for emailing, but not capable of producing “normal pictures.” In particular, there is low awareness that traditional prints—the kind they expect from film—can be made from digital pictures.
Those who do understand its potential benefits are frustrated. Their experience with the digital photographic system is fraught with difficulties. In particular, it is not obvious how to get prints in a simple manner. Printing service infrastructures are not widespread. Awareness of Internet printing services is low. Solutions that do exist are closed, limited to a single provider, and therefore often limited in terms of access, location, and features. The only alternative is the “do it yourself” route—investing in the necessary printer and supplies, and printing at home. However, the consumer soon learns that this path has drawbacks. Supplies are expensive, the process takes time, trial and error is often necessary, technical problems can arise, and the quality and durability of the prints can be limited. Moreover, this route is only open to the technically confident—and only those who own a sufficiently capable computer and are willing to invest the time and effort needed.
Many service providers in the industry are aware of these problems. However, each service provider has to go it alone, trying to solve the problems single-handedly. A direct result is that each solution is incompatible with the next, as each provider tries to develop a competitive advantage. Solutions are often proprietary, and incapable of interacting with one another. Establishing new business relationships, such as partnerships between various retailers and service providers, are made more difficult as a result. Furthermore, participants are required to invest in parts of the service supply chain that are not within their core competencies. Potential new and innovative service providers in specific aspects of the service provider chain are locked out, since they do not have the resources to offer a complete end-to-end solution.
Perhaps worst of all, the consumers are not well served, since the choices from any one provider are limited. For example, if a consumer establishes an account with one particular Internet photo service provider, and stores their digital images using that provider, they are typically “locked into” using only that particular provider to provide photo services for those digital images. If a customer wants a particular photo service that the provider does not offer, such as printing their digital images as album pages, the customer must establish a new account with a second provider offering album pages, and also store their images with the second provider. This takes considerable time and effort on the part of the consumer, and may be difficult or impossible if the first provider scanned the customer's film in order to provide the stored digital images. Therefore, the customer cannot easily order desired services, and the first provider loses a business opportunity.
The present invention encourages photo service providers to establish various types of business relationships with business entities (such as retail store owners and device or software suppliers) who control various types of order terminals, (such as photo kiosks, portable digital imaging devices, or home PCs running application software). These business relationships are provided in a directory. The directory enables the order terminals controlled by different business entities (e.g. different retailers) to access a number of different photo service providers which have established a cooperative business relationship with the business entity, while blocking access to photo service providers that have a hostile business relationship. As a result, a customer has more choices of service providers, and can choose from a wide range of photo products offered by numerous service providers.
The present invention provides a system, method and software solution that links order terminals, such as retail photo kiosks, home PCs, and portable imaging devices together with service providers, such as Internet storage and printing providers, and retail photo finishing providers. It provides a mechanism to define business relationships between the business entities providing the order terminal, and the service providers to ensure that only appropriate providers can be accessed from a particular order terminal. It supports the ability for billing and payment information to flow around the system that gives economic incentives for participants to work together.